Oral Answers to Questions

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I had an excellent meeting with the south-west peninsula rail taskforce, which has been working closely with the Government. I will make sure that we continue to liaise closely with it. Clearly, we need to find an answer and we need to find the funding to make it work. We cannot allow to happen what happened in the past when a problem on our railways led to the peninsula being cut off. We cannot see that happen again.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Q15. Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating my constituents Dominic and Rebecca from Mitcham on the birth of their daughter Alice. Like every parent, they want their daughter to have better opportunities than they had, but with average London house prices increasing by £40,000 in 2013 alone and the average house in London now worth more than half a million pounds, does he understand their fears that Alice will never have the chance they had to buy her own home in the area she was born in?

[The Prime Minister]

I want to help Alice, and many others like her in London, to get on to the housing ladder. That is why we are introducing shared ownership, which brings housing into the reach of many more people. It is why we have Help to Buy London, which is twice as generous as the Help to Buy scheme in the rest of the country. It is why we are selling off the most expensive council houses and rebuilding more affordable homes. All those measures have been taken under the guidance and drive of Zac Goldsmith, who would make an excellent Mayor of London. That is Alice’s best chance of a home: to have a Conservative Mayor and a Conservative Government working together, hand in glove.